Is Staff Training Really In One Ear and Out the Other?

Food service professionals may be in for some bad news when it comes to training their kitchen staff. The fact of the matter is, most of what we train workers does go in one ear and out the other.

While supervisors and managers in some industries can still manage to make things work despite low information retention levels, when it comes to food service, the risk of a food service worker making a mistake because they have forgotten their training can be very serious. It can cause someone to get sick—sometimes severely.

Here’s how the learning retention percentages stack up:

According to various studies, when we train our staff in a classroom setting, they forget nearly 50 percent of what they have just been taught in about 30 minutes. Wait two days, and that figure jumps up to almost 70 percent.

If you train your kitchen staff using textbooks, the numbers aren’t much better. Within two days, they have forgotten about 65 percent of what they have read in a textbook. Wait 14 days, and about 80 percent is lost.

So how can the food service industry address this situation? One measure DayMark Safety Systems has come up with is to include training videos with their new kitchen automation system, called Gateway.

“It’s included in one of the apps of the system,” says Jill Carte with DayMark. “[And] because everything is cloud-based, the training videos and recipe cards can be created and shared at all sites at any time, providing consistent and thorough staff training.”

Carte says one key reason training videos are helpful is that they allow food service workers to review procedures at any time, anywhere.

“It also ends any embarrassment a worker may feel when they forget how to do something. Instead of needing to ask a superior or another employee how to do something they have just been taught, they can simply access a video for a refresher” she adds.

So, does she consider training videos the answer to this learning retention problem? Is this how we can stop training and education flowing in one side of the brain and out the other?

Not quite. We cannot put all of our education eggs in one basket, Carte advises.

Instead, she recommends what she calls “bundled training.” With this method, food service professionals continue their training and education in classroom settings, read manuals and textbooks related to their duties, and watch training videos as needed/when needed.